My 2011 commitment

Resolutions...You got any? There's two sides to this story. The first being they're overrated, never fully followed up on and that resolution you swore you'd commit to in the new year suddenly disappears midway into February. In fact, how many of us can even remember our resolutions from 2010? My guess: maybe 1? The second camp values resolutions, the ability to start a new year re-engergized, refreshed, renewed. The chance to change something about yourself (your eating habits, your fitness, your judgments, your solidarity, your crappy job, your crappy attitude and so on and so forth). In my assessment class in graduate school, we always said that learning outcomes had to be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-oriented. Resolutions are the EXACT same way. Pick something tangible and set goals to make it happen and you just might be in that number in 2012 who can look back and remember with certainty what you set out to do in 2011.

There was a year I said to hell with new year resolutions. Too tough. Instead, I committed myself to new month resolutions. Each month I focused on something new with the premise that if you do anything for 30 days, it becomes ingrained in you, something you stop thinking consciously to do. Great idea right? Yea....I couldn't even tell you what any of those month resolutions were and I gave up somewhere in the spring.

So this year, I've decided not to start out with any resolutions. But rather, commitments. Is there a difference? Maybe. Maybe not. Yet using my own terms means playing by my own rules and I get to avoid all the societal eye rolls by declaring a resolution and failing to live up to it.

As of now, my commitment for 2011 is simple: To be able at the end of the year to look back and feel more nostalgia, more love, and more happiness from 2011 than I did at the end of 2010. And 2010 was a GOOD year. How will I attain this commitment:

Specific: See above.

Measurable: More trips, More adventures, Deeper relationships (both with new friends and significant others), More involvement in activities outside work.

Attainable: You betcha. (How academic is that!?)

Realistic: Probably a matter of whether I can change my attitude and outlook to become a more "glass is half full" over a "glass is half empty" kind of guy. Realistic? Time will tell...

Time-oriented: I got 362 more days.

So there we go! Happy resoluting, happy committing, happy living. It's 2011.

Cheers.